The Last Execution (12 page)

I can feel a ripple through my body
, thinks the poet. All the while he sees:

It only seems to agitate the crowd further that the condemned boy looks like a lazy apprentice who has sat himself in the corner to avoid the beady eyes of his master. Everyone is yelling and spitting on the lad. A raucous bunch of ruffians have forced their way to the front row, and those officers who—up till now—were posted at the scaffold in all their motionless glory are suddenly struggling to keep the masses at bay; their fine uniforms rumpled and clotted with spit in no time.

The boy and the executioner seem to be the only ones taking the proceedings with any measure of dignified calm. The executioner is standing one meter behind the boy, eyes cast down. He is dressed in simple clothing. His hands are hanging down by his sides. Only the scuffle of his feet give him away:
Let's cut to the chase!

The scaffold is made of a dark, weather-bitten wood—clearly secondhand material—but between the executioner's feet there's a glimpse of an altogether new, pale wood: a newly crafted coffin. To the right of the executioner lies the sack containing the heavy ax. It is an ax that has been passed down for generations; it has done this before. Up close, the boy's face is surprisingly fine, as if he were made of porcelain. As if all the executioner need do is hold him up and drop him—and he'll shatter in a thousand pieces!

A verse occurs to the poet. He mumbles it out loud. To remember it better, taste it:

“A town has many mouths to sate

But only one man in a cape;

Only one ax comes to bear,

One head from its neck to pare.”

A fly lands on the poet's nose. Then it's gone. He thinks:
A messenger of joy—or horror. Of spring on its way, or the omen of a corpse—which it will tuck into soon!
As the boy's sentence is read, the poet thinks of all the horrendous sicknesses in this world. But when the executioner lifts the ax out of the sack, he is ready.
I'm shaking
, the poet thinks. He tunes his body to the world.
What do you see? What do you feel? When the executioner braces his legs, raises his arms; now that he lets the ax fall.

It is horrible! Quicker than a wink, the executioner severs head and neck. Blood pours out of the body like a Nordic waterfall! The head, however, rolls to the far edge of the scaffold, the staring eyes and yellow tongue are clear to see. No, the boy was not made of porcelain. And now there is a patent calm upon the faces of the sheriff's family. You can see their thoughts rise up to their son with God in heaven, and down to the other in Hell, twisting in flames of eternal, tooth-splintering pain.

Then the poet faints. He falls, and the children scream with laughter. The adults laugh too. The howl of pain shoots up from the base of his spine to the back of his head. He loses his notebook and pen, but finds them again in amongst legs and boots. The crowd gets him back on his feet.

It is not the first time he feels like a foolish fowl.
Thank goodness Johanna didn't see me!
he thinks.
I wouldn't get a moment's sleep if she'd seen me!

Tomorrow the poet will be on his way. He makes a resolution:
First thing tomorrow morning I'll look her up, that dear girl, and confess my feelings for her. If she feels the same, stay. If not, say adieu—and be away.

When he sits in a hotel room somewhere in this world, he will write it all down and send it to her.

Will she tremble and cry when she reads his words? Will she long for him when he is thousands of miles away? Or will he be forgotten? Will he be rubbed out from memory? Ah, who knows? To travel is to live!

Now the final words of the letter come to him. The final verse:

One town's many mouths, a chorus fair,

Whilst a head that still doth stare

Rolls to the ground

Without a sound.

It's not just about that executed boy. She will understand that.

The poet sees it before him, as if he were sitting in the same room. He sees a figure reading a letter in a chair by the window. She looks out the window, hugging his words to her bosom.

T
he boy has felt, and not felt, the hand that has taken hold of his hair.

“Mississippi.”

The boy doesn't know why, but he says it out loud. He tries to count them. He is not good at words, but he keeps trying, till he's as sure, as sure can be: four. There are four
s
's in that meandering river. But there are also four
i
's. So there are just as many
i
's as there are
s
's; just as many men without heads, he thinks, and dives into the water. That's how it feels when the hand pushes his head down onto the block: like diving headfirst into water.

Now the executioner is swinging his ax, and the boy is executed on Gallows Hill; the movement is quick and resolute, the head is already severed from its body, but still it feels like the age of a mountain; the boy has taken note of all the people, not that he consciously wished to block them out—he makes a note of everything and everyone—but he fixes irrationally long on certain things: A mother, who has discovered a louse in her son's hair, how she rakes through it, finds the louse, tries to squash it to death between her fingers; he hears shouting, many voices yelling, but one voice in particular stands out—it is loud and clear, a young man calling, “Simon! Simon! Simon!”; he can smell a particular tobacco that reminds him of that time when he found a cigarette case on the road, picked it up, and put it back where he'd found it—only to turn and see it taken by another; it ought not be possible, but the boy is sure he can hear the dog; the hill is black with people, but again one man stands out—he twists his upper body, looks down, and lifts his elbow, and a whine pierces the noise as the man kicks the dog lying at his feet; the boy realizes that it was right here where he once sat with his father to rest his broken body; finally, he sees a birthmark on the executioner's hand and that the sun is already lower than it stood before. The boy thinks that everything happens so unbelievably slow, yet so unbelievably fast. Also this is something he has felt before:

The river water is surprisingly warm, and he swims easily upstream, with effortless, powerful strokes.

Then there's a thump against the back of his neck as the raft drifts in. He grabs hold of it, crawls up onto it, and lies on his back with his hand under his head; lets himself be led with the stream.

His body dries in no time under the sun. A fly lands on his knee.

The raft drifts gently down the river.

S after S after S.

After the next S,

he catches sight

of the dog on land

three legs and

a wagging tail

he lifts an arm

and waves

with a boy's

hand so slim

and sunburned

into the

next curve

he sees his father

tall and straight

like a soldier

he salutes

before the girl is

on the bank

tousling

her hair

she throws

a flower

red leaves

like a roof

he cannot

grab

hold

of

them

he looks up

she is standing there

and smiling

her hair is

so black

so shiny

that he still

thinks

there

you

are

before

the last

swing

On February 22, 1853, fifteen-year-old Niels Nielsen was executed, sentenced to death on charges of arson and murder of the sheriff's little son. It was the last execution in Svendborg, Denmark. Gallows Hill still exists. At the top of the hill there is a bench. From here, you can sit and look down over the town. Just to the right of the hill is a kindergarten, the Parrot, attended by my two sons, Jeppe and Jacob.

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